Assistant Professor

Jack is a geographer working at the intersection of human geography and geographic information science (GIS). He has broad interests in cartography/GIS, health geography, urban geography, science and technology studies, the history of geographic thought, and the history of cartography.

His past work has explored the changing nature of health mapping in the United States, the role of map libraries in preserving historic maps, and geographic pedagogy in the undergraduate classroom. His most recent work explores the history of Census tracts in the United States, examining how social scientists worked to bound urban neighborhoods to institutionalize Census tracts across the nation.

One of Jack’s ongoing projects queers cartographic practice by contextualizing how geographic media shaped spatial practices of queer community formation in the pre-digital era, and how this might help cartographers reenvision what maps do today. Another ongoing project examines fire insurance maps of twentieth century American cities to understand how conceptions of risk were bound up in insurers understandings of race, class, and ethnicity and the spatiality of the built environment.

Moving forward, Jack is interested in better understanding how individuals evaluate spatial information to gain access to gender-affirming care, exploring the importance of the Tennessee Valley Authority in advancing geographic thought, and investigating the role of analog creative practices in advancing map production.